RetopoFlow - Retopology Tools for Blender

AAA Games and Films Need AAA Topology

A clean mesh with good topology is an essential part high-quality models. Not only is clean topology easier to work with, a good mesh is easier to rig, animation deformation is improved, the texturing process is made simpler - and most of all, it provides an optimized mesh that increases performance across the board.

When using sculpting to create highly detailed models the retopology process is also an unavoidable one.

But it’s no secret that most artists don’t enjoy retopology. Let’s face it: retopology can be tedious and a frustrating process.

“Stop stressing about retopology, it’s easy now”

While great modeling tools, Blender’s native toolset isn't designed for retopology; it was created with free-form polygonal modeling in mind. This leads to a slow retopology workflow with lots of pitfalls, primarily due to a lack of universal surface-snapping. Blenders shrinkwrap and face snapping tools only get you so far.

Stop dreading your wireframe renders

If you’re no fan of retopology but want to create clean and professional models, meet RetopoFlow.

This retopology suite for Blender helps you create clean topology in minutes versus hours, and no more painful and slow process. Instead, focus where it counts: your mesh flow and final topology.

RetopoFlow will help you create smooth, efficient, and effective models for AAA quality versions of your detailed sculpts.

RetopoFlow does for retopology what sculpting did for modeling. This retopology suite turns a difficult and technical process into a smooth, artistic flow so you can create professional models in less time than ever.

No more manual creating retopology. RetopoFlow lets you to draw geometry onto the surface of your high-res model.

I can say with confidence that on a character model, RetopoFlow will save you hours and hours of work.

- Jonathan Williamson, Blender artist and RetopoFlow co-creator

A unified suite retopology tools

RetopoFlow 2 provides a powerful set of unified tools that all work side-by-side within a new retopology mode, creating a seamless workflow.

Contours: stroke-based retopo for cylindrical forms

The Contours tool gives you a quick and easy way to retopologize cylindrical forms. For example, it’s ideal for organic forms, such as arms, legs, tentacles, tails, horns, etc.

The tool works by drawing strokes perpendicular to the form to define the contour of the shape. Immediately upon drawing the first stroke, a preview mesh is generated, showing you exactly what you’ll get. You can draw as many strokes as you like, in any order, from any direction.

New in 2.0: symmetry support for Contours for torsos and similar forms

PolyPen: vertex-by-vertex creation for absolute control

The PolyPen provides everything you need for fast retopology in those scenarios where you need absolute control of every vertex position (e.g. low poly game models). This tool lets you insert vertices, extrude edges, fill faces, and transform the subsequent geometry all within one tool and in just a few clicks.

New in 2.0: pre-visualization for precision and absolute mesh control

PolyStrips: quad strips for complex topology flow

The Polystrips tool provides quick and easy ways to create the key face loops needed to retopologize a complex model. For example, if you need to retopologize a human face, creatures, or any other complex organic; hard-surface object.

Polystrips works by hand drawing strokes on to the high-resolution object. The strokes are instantly converted into spline-based strips of polygons, which can be used to quickly map out the key topology flow. Clean mesh previews are generated on the fly, showing you the exact mesh that’ll be created.

New in 2.0: manipulate any strip of quads as a PolyStrip, including curve adjustments and segment count changes

Strokes: fill surfaces with a single stroke

Extrude selections with fast strokes and quickly fill areas with quads from a single stroke.

New in 2.0: brand new tool!

Patches: fill large areas with even quads

Use Patches to grid-fill large areas with selection-based filling, complete with pre-visualization, making tweaks fast and easy.

New in 2.0: Patches is now a dedicated tool with more control, yet simpler workflows.

Loops

Use the Loops tool to slide edges and insert new edge loops into existing face loops. All new loops are automatically snapped to the surface.

New in 2.0: insert and slide loops within a single tool

Tweak and Relax

The Tweak and Relax tools provide a brush-based system for quickly repositioning geometry and smoothing meshes with a fast, sculpting-like workflow.

New in 2.0: Tweak and Relax are now dedicated tools with better algorithms and features

Universal surface snapping

RetopoFlow provides universal surface snapping, meaning that everything you do automatically snaps the new or selected geometry to the surface of your high-resolution source object(s).

Add a new strip of polygons with Polystrips? Snapped to the surface. Create circular rings of edges around an arm with Contours? The mesh is instantly conformed to the surface.

No Shrinkwrap or Face snapping needed!

How is v2 different from v1?

Version 2 is a complete re-write from the ground up. A lot has changed but here's a summary of top 5 high-impact changes:

Seamlessly switch between RetopoFlow tools through the new unified Retopology Mode

View Options and Mesh Visibility settings for adjusting mesh display for good visibility, no matter the project.

Built-in General and Tool Help, just a keypress away with F1 and F2.

Rewritten from the ground up for dramatic performance improvements, unification, and cleaner code (making future updates and new tools much easier to implement)

What professional artists have to say

Retopoflow 2.0 is a great update to the Retopoflow addon. It is in fact so packed with features that it can be compared with some standalone retopology applications. The friendly interface and quick help makes it easy and fun to create manual retopology. Fantastic job by the amazing developers over at CG Cookie!

Added Source and Target object functionality: retopology is no longer dependent on selection, making workflow more flexible and easier.

Polystrips Symmetry Visualization: symmetry can now be visualized and toggled with Shift + X in Polystrips.

New custom icons for all tools!

Refactored all tools into a much better structure, enabling simpler development and dramatically improving codebase organization

Brush size in Polystrips and Tweak now keeps its size across sessions

Fixed keymap conflicts with custom navigation controls

Fixed many, many misc bugs as part of the refactor.

Version 1.0.1

Custom icons for Polystrips and Contours (requires Blender 2.75+)

Improve Polystrips to use key_map.py file for easier customizability

Improved color theming for Contour Guides and Tweak tool

Disabled debug display of various elements of Contour Guides

Various misc fixes and typos

Version 1.0.0 - initial release

Documentation is coming soon. For now refer to the built-in tool documentation, accessible via the toolbar or F1 and F2 while RetopoFlow is active.

How do I update RetopoFlow to new versions?

RetopoFlow uses the Add-on Updater module to allow updating from right within Blender!

If you have version 1.3.0+ installed then simply go to the User Preferences > Add-ons > RetopoFlow and click Check now for RetopoFlow update, then Update Now.

Alternatively you can update by first removing previous versions of RetopoFlow and then installing the new version via User Preferences > Add-ons > Install from File. From the file window then choose the downloaded .zip to install.

If I own a copy v1.x do I get 2.0 for free?

You sure do! v2.0 is a free upgrade for all prior 1.x customers.

Will RetopoFlow work in Blender 2.8?

We will add 2.8 support just soon as the API is finished and ready for add-on development.

Does RetopoFlow work on Mac OS?

Yes! RetopoFlow works on any system which Blender supports, including Mac OS, Linux, and Windows.

Item Rating

This item has an average rating of 4 from 56 ratings by the community.

63%

17%

6%

6%

11%

Yellow Runner
12 days ago

Excelent, the new version it's working greath, brutal, amazing, i can say, the best topology tool in 3d world.

Papantoa
17 days ago

Excellent so far! In love with the PolyPen tool
Wishing for:
1) Masking option: mask Un-selected option
2) Point counter: showing the current point count of the new mesh as you work. A tris, quad, ngon breakdown would be cool too (for the new mesh)
Keep up the good work guys!

Kirill
25 days ago

Works like a charm within homely felt Blender. Extremely simple to use.

Jonathan Williamson23 days ago

I'm glad to hear you like it Kirill!

Pino
about 1 month ago

It was hard to get use to the keybinds at first, but now that I've been using it for a month I can practically retopo anything in a few hours. Amazing tool, keep up the good work!

Jonathan Williamson23 days ago

We absolutely aim to improve the keybinding system, eventually allowing full customization and integration with Blender's regular keymap system.
Thanks for the rating!

garthhendy
about 2 months ago

When I bought this add on last year it was quite buggy and it crashed a lot, but I pushed through it since I was making 2 characters, it wasn't a huge issue, and it was the only thing I could use for retopology. But the developers did say at the time a 2.0 version was coming for christmas 2018 so I waited and did other tasks on our game.

Christmas arrived, but 2.0 wasn't released so I reorganised our schedule to do environment art and level design instead. It wasn't until around July that 2.0 was released, but it ended up be quite frustrating to use.

About 3 weeks ago I left feedback about the issues I had and waited for a solution https://github.com/CGCookie/retopoflow/issues/643 . Nothing came about, and I couldn't afford to waste more time using Retopoflow, so I had to buy Topogun, (I wasted money buying Retopoflow) which didn't have any problems at all and I was able to finish all of character models without a single crash or bug.

If anyone is unsure about Retopoflow, buy Topogun instead, it's 14 dollars more, but it's a lot more stable and the functionality is a lot smoother.

Jonathan Williamson23 days ago

I'm sorry to hear you had a bad experience and our apologies for the delay on your reported issue. That delay is on us and we'll do what we can to make it right.

kickers
about 2 months ago

cant change viewpoint. Its very stressful!

CG Cookieabout 2 months ago

Hi kickers, please send us a support question via your inbox. We're happy to help resolve problems like this. You can send us a message via https://blendermarket.com/inbox

daniel313
about 2 months ago

My score is two stars, for the effort and insight necessary of people who offered their time, knowledge and suffering to get to create something like retopoflow.I admit it, but I am not a satisfied consumer with the support offered. I got two answers that had nothing to do with my problem, send a video. I explained that when activating RETOPOFLOW by pressing scroll to move in the 3D view nothing happened, ... I did not get an answer, after having gone through many states between them ... the helplessness and the maximum frustration when trying everything and not working , I left my project for a week to solve something technical and not having lost $ 86 ... in the end I found the answer (IF RETOPOFLOW V2 IS IN ANOTHER LANGUAGE OTHER THAN THE ENGLISH WILL APPEAR THIS PROBLEM AND YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO WORK WITH IT, IT WILL WORK PUTING IT IN ENGLISH FROM THE PREFERENCES OF THE SYSTEM) people who do not have blender in English will find the problem, (PLEASE SOLVE IT BUT ABOVE EVERYTHING IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE YOUR DUTY NOT THE CONSUMER'S). Thank you.

CG Cookieabout 2 months ago

We're sorry to hear RetopoFlow hasn't been working for you. An issue has been logged to try and solve the language problem; it's a tricky problem but we're hoping to find a solution.
Regardless I have submitted a full refund for your trouble.

Giovanny Arce
about 2 months ago

I'm giving five stars because the work you guys have done to this addon is fantastic. Compared to the old versions the update and improvement have been outstanding. The addon still has minimum glitches like sometimes is hard to select vertices that are under the reference mesh (this means I have to get out of Retopoflow mode and move those vertices out outside to be able to pick them). Another thing is that if your reference mesh is composed of multiple parts overlapping, Retopoflow won't be able to detect it as a whole single object, so tools like Contours won't work as expected. That being said, maybe there are ways to fix this in the settings that I'm not aware. Please keep it up the good work guys, this tool is a dream come true. 10/10

CG Cookieabout 2 months ago

Thanks for the rating Giovanny!
There is an option to Snap Verts to the surface under Target Cleaning, which will let you snap all verts or only the selected verts to the surface. This helps to resolve selection issues that stem from the vertices being below the source surface.

hitman17528
3 months ago

Needless to say, 5 stars, and extremely stable in version 2.0!

Jonathan Williamson3 months ago

Thanks for the rating!

Syed Sameer Hasan Rizvi
3 months ago

Great tool that speed up my work, but i have to exit the tool to merge two vertices. Would be great if merge was integrated to RetopoFlow.

Jonathan Williamson3 months ago

Thanks for the rating Syed! You can merge vertices with the PolyPen tool by dragging one onto the other. There's an option to disable Auto-Merge in the tool settings, but it's on by default.

Miguel Salinas
4 months ago

Version 2.0 is way too slow for professional production work.
I have an sculpted mesh of 2500000 polys and a retopo i made without tools of 210000 polya and retopoflow consider too high the polygon cont for both meshes. In version 1.3 i can work freely without problems.
I consider this version 2 a step in UI but a step backwards in usability

Jonathan Williamson3 months ago

Hey Miguel, please reach out to us via your Inbox so that we can look into your performance problems. RetopoFlow ought to be able to handle that poly count without issue, so long as your machine has adequate specs.
Please send us a message with your file and we'll try and resolve it for you!

Firezac
4 months ago

Retopoflow is one of the best addons that I have ever used at Blender. It's bring so much to the software, simple functions that I never have seeing in any other open source software. Before ir I uses to use the 3D Coat to make retopologys, but now it's all in Blender and working pretty well. For the first time, my topologys at Blender looks like profissional and are saving so much time.
If you are a active 3D sculpt artist, you need this tool!

Maciej Szcześnik
4 months ago

I am an indie game developer (with some 10+ years of AAA experience). I use Blender for nearly all my 3D work (modelling, animation). I love sculpting, but retopology was always a daunting task. Sometimes I even preferred to create low poly models right away and just add some details in Substance Painter to save some time. RetopoFlow 2.0 changed that. I can create a full character outfit (model it with Marvelous Designer and Blender) and retopo it in just a few days. And the retopology process is a smooth and pleasant experience :). I actually started to like it a lot - it's a lot more like sculpting now.

I even used RetopoFlow 2.0 for... level design in one of my games. Since polystrips have this nice, even distribution of quads on a target mesh, I was able to use them as spawners for objects like fences (using dupli faces). I also use RetopoFlow to draw some detail objects on my sculpts (I use strokes and then convert them to a curve). It's simply awesome!

dan
4 months ago

Really great add on! Definitely one of the reasons I use blender more and more in my pipeline. It'd be great if the polypen tool could create 1 click quads, topogun style - instead of creating a tri first and having to connect it every time it'd connect to the nearest vertex. Or it'd be great to at least have the option for it. Other than that it's one of the best retopo solutions out there, definitely worth it!

Matthias Patscheider
4 months ago

retopoflow 2 is a HUGE improvement to version 1. I was disappointed and frustrated with version 1.x. It crashed, didn’t work properly in non-trivial examples and most of the time I stopped using it all together because I got too frustrated with it. Version 2 does have some minor bugs and I think some usability aspects could still be improved, but in general it makes life much, much easier. I really like the way it is designed. It seems highly polished and thought through. And the best is, it simply works! The decision to rewrite the entire core was worth it.
One thing I really like about the developers is, that they are open for feedback and you can simply email them and ask or report issues and bugs. I have always got an immediate response.
Retopoflow 2 is finally the product I hoped the 1. Version to be. I highly recommend everybody who does retopology from time to time and to everybody who was frustrated with version 1. Give it a new try. It’s worth it.

Mickael Krebs
4 months ago

ok it's really great. I have always hated the retopo and clearly RF helps a lot to make it less painful. things are going much faster and clearly this tools will be central to my workflow from today. even more fluidity with a large number of poly could be cool, but the tools are already very solid at the moment. Bravo

arkinum
5 months ago

I got this add on when v1.00 first came out. After tying it for a few hours I found it to be too clunky and buggy for any piratical use. While I appreciated what the developers where trying to do, I shelved it and just used Blenders in house tools.

Fast forward to now at v2.00 (Though I honestly feel that this is the real v1.00). The clunkynes is gone and while there are still some bugs here and there, it's nowhere near the level that was during the initial release.

While it may not replace all of Blenders in house tools, I can now exit, do my edits, then continue on in polystrips (without it crashing or bugging out on me).

I'm glad the developers chose to polish this up, because it brings some much needed functionality to the re-topology workflow.

linograndi
5 months ago

An awesome tool. Just that.

nirblu
5 months ago

This tool saves me so much time making animation with scanned faces. Total retop control.
Love it. Recommend it.

Lucas Falcao
5 months ago

Retopoflow 2.0 has everything I wanted the previous versions have and it's much better now, working seamless between modes is really great. Before I used to use Retopoflow only for some parts, now I do the retopology of the entire model, even ears, hands and small parts.

This is a very important tool in my workflow, it turns the retopology process into a very pleasant and relaxing process. A big thanks to you guys, for making this awesome tool available!

Jonathan Williamson5 months ago

That means a lot coming from you Lucas. Thank you so much for the encouraging support! We could not agree more on this being what it was always intended to be.

D. Cook
6 months ago

I have dreaded retopology for so long, I usually tried to avoid it. I would often end up using the decimate tool to reduce the number of polygons, but my models suffered because of it. With this tool, I might actually end up hating retopology less. Thank you, I'm anxiously waiting for version 2.0

Jonathan Williamson5 months ago

Thanks for the rating D.! Version 2.0 is now available so give it a shot!

xun
6 months ago

Hello I am a game developer from China. Like the concept of Retopoflow's functionality. Your work is admirable.

Ask a question for help. The blender plug-in manager cannot update the 2.0.0.1 version. This may be related to our Internet policy.

Please give a downloadable, patched network address (the way the patch is downloaded is suitable for me. If there is a patch description, it would be even better!!)

By the way, I would like to ask when the official version 2.0 can be released? I look forward to thanking you again for the great work!

helge
7 months ago

This is an awesome addon, I didn't do much retopology until 2 weeks ago, was always a little afraid of it, thought it would be cumbersome and time consuming. Then I bought this during spring sale and now I do retopology for FUN. I have used the 2.0 beta version most of the time, because the workflow is so much nicer than in the previous version. It feels beta for sure, sometimes I get error messages, the selection is still kind of flimsy especially in polypen mode but it never really crashed to the point where I would lose any progress. There are still a lot of features that I think should be added to make the workflow even smoother. right now for certain things I have to go back to edit mode. But I guess they are on to it. (I would really like to be able to rotate/scale a selection regardless of the tool, ripping and extruding a selection would be fantastic and some of the tools could be merged, like ctrl+relax=tweak for example)
Performance is ok, not as responsive as the same mesh would be in native blender modes, but I have been retopologizing lots of detailed stuff on my old laptop and it is doable up to a point.
It definitively has a learning curve. Some procedures feel a little different to the usual blender approach. Patch tool is great.
Buy it.

Nemanja
7 months ago

Ok so i finally find the way to contact developers...I'd like to point out that i was so overwhelmed by the idea of retopoflow that i made a quick purchase. However, my updated 2.0.0 version never actually worked! Errors that im getting are eather my mesh is too high res (this is very odd considering what retopoflow is all about) and my obj file is around 11mb and poly count is around 100000 faces which is not nearly enough that this add on should support. I want to say that also another issue that i have is that my object is too big? i don't get this eather...and the last but not least i can't update it from blender 2.79b downloaded from the website directly. At the end i want to say that i really like the idea of retopoflow and the old version is somewhat working nicely still i mainly got the add on because of a promised 2.0 update and the way it was supposed to be great. So any help from developers would be nice.

Jonathan Williamson7 months ago

Hi Nemanja,
Please do send us your test model by uploading it to pasteall.org/blend and then sending us a message via the widget on the right side of this page, where it says Create Message.
This way we can test your model and determine if it's an issue with RetopoFlow or something specific to that model.
Thanks!

Monkok
8 months ago

Guess I'm lucky to start using it since 2.0 beta, because I'm not familiar yet with any sort of instability of 1.3.2. The tool is totally a game changer, no doubts. It is incredibly functional and intuitive. Provided with nice interface and comprehensive documentation about each tool inside the addon. I'm absolutely satisfied

Jonathan Williamson7 months ago

Thanks for the review monkok; it's great to hear that it's working well for you!

Bennie Griffin
8 months ago

Hi RetopoFlow Team,

I recently transitioned to version 2.0.0 beta and must admit that I am SUPER IMPRESSED by the new interface and how all tools works seamlessly together in just one mouse click. The thought to have merged the "Loop Cut" and "Loop Slide" tool (version 1.3.2) together was a GREAT concept!

And to think this is only beta! Can't wait to see what you guys have next in store! This is by FAR the BEST add-on I will ever own! You guys have made Retopo so much FUN! One negative to add (really small, but probably no headache) is that the "Welcome" screen has some grammar errors...but that is just me.

Thanks again guys for all the hard work!

Bennie

Jonathan Williamson8 months ago

Thanks Bennie! That's so great to hear and thank you for the rating.

Gregory Lord
9 months ago

I am absolutely stunned by how awesome the new v2.0 is. I really enjoyed the original Contours and the earlier 1.0 track of RetopoFlow, but this has come further than I even hoped it could, and now feels like a completely native Blender application. The tools are woven together extremely professionally, and are intuitive and responsive, with a surprisingly solid performance, even still in beta. I would recommend this to anyone that does even a bit of retopology -- it takes what is easily the most tedious task in 3D modeling and makes it far easier, and honestly even pretty fun. Truly amazing work, you guys.

CG Cookie9 months ago

That's so great to hear Gregory! Version 2.0 is going to be a game changer we think.

Matthew
9 months ago

This works great!

CG Cookie9 months ago

Excellent! Thanks for the rating Matthew!

吉呈吉佑
9 months ago

Great plug-in! Waiting for the arrival of 2.0, hope will not be too long.

Jonathan Williamson9 months ago

Thanks for the rating! We hope 2.0 won't be much longer either :)

toomanydemons
10 months ago

The usefulness of this tool is fantastic. For starters, it's a lot more robust than the previous version, and when it does crash, you don't lose anything and can get right back into the work in seconds.

The Relax and Tweak tools are excellent for polishing geometry and can make even hastily-placed quads into professional looking work. The Patches tool is by far my favorite.

All of the tools are lovely and the functionality is great. Thank you for making this tool better!

Jonathan Williamson10 months ago

Thanks for the review Allen and I'm sorry to hear you've had so many stability issues. Version 1.x is definitely lacking in that department, which has been our number one priority with version 2.
Beta for 2.0 is almost here (several months late), so I'll be keen to see what how your experiences improve.

ambientboi
11 months ago

This is cool but I only bought because I thought it had the edge patches feature : ( Will this ever be a thing? Realizing this was in testing but its been more than a year now. Really curious and excited. Thank you

Jonathan Williamson11 months ago

Edge Patches was never finished as it proved to be too convoluted to work in a streamlined manner.
We have basic edge patching functionality in v2 that we're working on, though. It's' quite basic initially but we'll continue to improve it as we go along.

Deucer
11 months ago

I'm still learning 3D, so this is my first retopo tool. The install, documentation, and videos are nice and simple, which made it easy for me to just start. I really appreciate that there's only a few elegant tools, many more would feel too daunting for a beginner like me (and I'd bet these few tools are deeper than I realize). I'm glad I picked this tool from the others that I was considering.

Jonathan Williamson11 months ago

Thanks for the review Deucer!

Bryan Stone
11 months ago

Would be better but the latest version has knocked out my install, and I have for help with no concrete resolution to why its not working. Will give it another review if a fix or 2.0 corrects the issue.

Jonathan Williamson11 months ago

Hey Bryan, I don't believe we ever got a support request from you on the install issue?
Typically installation problems are due to conflicting files left over from the install. It's always a good practice to restart Blender after updating an add-on, otherwise it'll commonly try and run both versions at the same time and fail.
Please send me a support request via your inbox, https://blendermarket.com/inbox and I'll be happy to help you troubleshoot further.

Amber Gibbs
12 months ago

Installed the wrong version, seems to be working fine now!

Jonathan Williamson12 months ago

Good to hear Amber! We'll remove the previous review so as to be more accurate.
Cheers!

jesus camarillo
12 months ago

Is Retopoflow 1.3.2 working on blender 2.79 ?

Jonathan Williamson12 months ago

Hey Jesus, yes RetopoFlow works in 2.7.9.
For pre-sale questions please send a message via the Inbox, which you can do from the button to the right of the product description.
If you're having problems in 2.7.9 then please send us a message also via the inbox and we'll resolve it.
Reviews are not the right place for a question.
Cheers,
Jonathan

Thanks for the great rating! 2.0 is being actively worked on, so stay tuned!

gabriel montagne
about 1 year ago

It's hard to think about ever retopologizing again without this addon. Good stuff!

Jonathan Williamsonabout 1 year ago

Cheers Gabriel! I'm thrilled you like the tool.

ezydenias
about 1 year ago

This is an essential plugin for blender if you ask me! It would be an essential plugin for every software if it was available for them. Now it might be buggy from what I've heard but I didn't encountered any bugs. But even if there are they are solvable with support of the creators I guess. But anyway, this cuts down the time for repology from hours to minutes! I am not joking, it even totally killed my box modell workflow for characters. Because now retopology is so quick that there is no reason not to sculpt a character. It actually was my fault not to purchase this a year ago and wasting my time making really good box modelled character, even if they rivaled sculpted models in some parts the topology just can't compare. Just buy it, even if it is not on discount, if you are into character design, if you work professionally and want to stay competetive than buy this plugin!.

Jonathan Williamsonabout 1 year ago

That's very encouraging ezdenias! Thanks for the great review and stay tuned for 2.0! It's coming quite soon.

smwyatt45
about 1 year ago

Just purchased this with the Holliday sale. It's a great addon for speeding up your work flow. I do anticipate version 2. I have only seen one glitch with the program that wasn't an obvious fix within about 7 hours of use. I rate five stars because so far it has made (in my opinion) on of the most boring parts of 3D slightly more enjoyable.
With that said I would however like to see the polygon pen tool work more intuitively, like quad draw for Maya. It is almost just as much work at the moment as not even using it in the first place. Please add the ability to create faces without having to select verts. Please investigate quad draw.

Thank you very much for the time and effort on this product. Looking forward to the future of this!

Jonathan Williamsonabout 1 year ago

Thanks for the great review! We'll absolutely look into ways of making Polypen more intuitive. Reducing the selection requirement would be a good starting point, as that is easily the slowest aspect.
Stay tuned for 2.0 news very soon!

Forrest
about 1 year ago

Its a great addon, when can we expect more news on the 2.0 update?

Jonathan Williamsonabout 1 year ago

V2.0 is coming soon but we don't have an exact release date yet. We're finishing up the missing features and polishing it. We'll be emailing all customers a link to download the beta as soon as we can!
Stay tuned and thanks for the rating!

jfishe25
about 1 year ago

Great product. Very convenient; can't wait until version 2.0!

Jonathan Williamsonabout 1 year ago

Thanks for the great rating! Stay tuned. 2.0 won't be much longer.

alanhperry
about 1 year ago

Hi guys, I just bought Retopoflow and while I can work with it, I'm having a bit of trouble with the mesh turning black when I go back into it after my initial setup. Is this the best place for support issues or should I go onto the Cookie website?

Jonathan Williamsonabout 1 year ago

Hey alanhperry! You can get RetopoFlow support via your inbox at https://blendermarket.com/inbox
That will send a message straight to myself and the rest of the RetopoFlow team so that we can help troubleshoot.

mh76
about 1 year ago

I love it! The best tool for retopology on the market. And with 2.0 it will be even better :).

Jonathan Williamsonabout 1 year ago

That's great to hear mh76! Thanks for the rating and stay tuned for 2.0 :)

Jack Kimberley
over 1 year ago

It has corrupted and ruined too many of my projects within a couple minutes of use. As much as I want to use the tool it shoots me down every time.

Jonathan Williamsonabout 1 year ago

Hey Jack, I'm sorry to hear it's not worked out for you. I really wish you would consider sending us a message via support before rating it so poorly, though.
In the vast majority of cases we've been able to find a solution to the problem.
I've sent you a message to try and resolve the issues. We can only fix the problems we're aware of...

Faeriel
over 1 year ago

Very versatile and precise control over geometry. Easily right up there with old the industry giants like 3Dcoat, and with a very reasonable price too.

Craig Jones
over 1 year ago

This is a great addon and the support is top notch - I can make a simple observation online and get a response almost immediately...I wish the people that made the software we use at work were so quick to respond :D The tools are continuing to evolve, and that is nice to watch happen, but the strongest part of this addon is the way that the help functions are right there to assist if I forget what I used to know.

papasmurf7777
over 1 year ago

Awesome addon!

Willy Lougne
over 1 year ago

very good tool. Love my new workflow. Ah by the way updater inside addon .. priceless

CG Cookieover 1 year ago

I'm glad you like it Willy!

jayhotz
over 1 year ago

Very unstable, Totally unusable, DO NOT BUY IT :(

CG Cookieover 1 year ago

Hey jayhotz, I'm sorry you're having trouble with RetopoFlow, but please reach out to us via the inbox before rating.
The vast majority of stability issues can be resolved quickly via a couple mesh tweaks, as they're typically caused by transformations on the source object or mesh discrepancies.
We're more than happy to help work through issues, but we can't help if you don't let us know what the problems are.
You can reach out to us (and any other Creator that you've purchased from) via your inbox at: https://blendermarket.com/inbox

So I just my updated the RetopoFlow addon to 1.3. But I seem to be having the same problem as I did with 1.2 and that the Tweak function isn't working when I press and hold T. Keep in mind I uninstalled the previous versions and Im working with Blender v2.78. So Im not sure whether its user error or a bug. Thanks

Jonathan Williamsonalmost 2 years ago

Hey Jason, thanks for the rating! As for the Tweak tool issue, I believe I know the problem, which we have a fix for in 1.3.1, which is coming any day now.
I'll follow up with you via a private message to trouble your specific issue.

superion
about 2 years ago

Pros: Small learning curve makes it easy to learn, and dramatically improves retopology workflow with a good set of tools. Easy to recover work in case of an issue.

Cons: Depending on your budget it can be pricey, and it can be buggy at times (I personally haven't experienced more than a few issues, and when I did they weren't at all destructive.)

RetopoFlow is a great add on. If you find retopology super tedious like I do then you'll appreciate what RetopoFlow offers. I did get it on sale during Black Friday, but even with it's flaws, I recommend it, and it is definitely worth the money if you're considering it. I don't know if this is possible with Blender add ons, but if there were a trial it might help people who are unsure decide if the tool works for them.

Vaughan Harris
about 2 years ago

An excellent add on - really takes the pain out of retopo-ing large areas of sculpts.
Contours, Polystrips and Polypen work very well together and represent a pretty versatile toolset.
Retopo can be a complex subject, and this is a sophisticated add on, so there is a learning curve, but with practice it all makes sense.
In the event of any glitches, bugs or plain user error, the product support has been excellent and swift in my experience.
Among the more pricey add ons, but well worth it in my opinion.

dank0
about 2 years ago

Love the ideas, but it is totally unusable, guys sit on your a.. and fix bugs before you ask for $.

CG Cookieabout 2 years ago

dank0, similar to the reply to Gregory above, please be sure you've fully uninstalled any older versions of RetopoFlow before using the new version.
If after doing that you're still running into issues then please report them to the bug tracker: https://github.com/CGCookie/retopoflow/issues
Reporting bugs is the single best way to help us help you; being the creators we're often too close to the development and aren't able to test all the many, many different ways that people use our tools. By reporting bugs you're not only helping us better understand your workflow, we're also able to more quickly fix the specific issues.

gregory wasdyke
about 2 years ago

Useful, but extremely unstable.

CG Cookieabout 2 years ago

Hey Gregory, I'm really saddened that you're finding RetopoFlow to be unstable. Typically many bugs and crashes are caused by conflicting code from having multiple versions of RetopoFlow installed at the same time.
When installing RetopoFlow (or any add-on) it's best to completely remove the previous version of the add-on before installing the new one. After uninstalling the old version, restart Blender and only then install the new version.
I suspect you'll find many of these stability issues to disappear immediately.
Either way, I hope we can get these issues addressed, so if you come across more bugs or crashes please report them to the bug tracker so that we can fix them: https://github.com/CGCookie/retopoflow/issues